But you could tell those guys were just bitter masturbators who'd chosen their life partners poorly.

One gentleman almost captured it with his description. I remember the conversation because I was concentrating so hard on what he was saying I nearly got run over by bus. He reckoned there would be a moment where everything good I'd ever heard about parenthood would make perfect sense and everything bad I'd heard wouldn't matter.

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"There's only one way to get into this club," he said. "I can't tell you if it'll be right after the birth, it might take years, but it'll happen, Sammy. You're that type of bloke."

I love compliments, so I took this on board and, yeah, the birth was amazing. Thanks to the wonders of epidural anaesthesia, I watched my then-partner lean down and draw our baby daughter out of her body, then pull her up on to her breast to feed. The circle of life.

I later went for long walks with this tiny pink creature, wearing one of those god-awful Baby Bjorn harnesses and not giving a shit how silly I looked, because my daughter was asleep against my chest and she felt safe and calm enough to do that. It was sublime validation.

The epiphanies came thick and fast: how much of our childhood we forget; how much we owe our mothers for all those sleepless nights and nappy changes and feeds; how thrilled any parent must be to hear the words "I love you" from their child. It reminded me why you should call your parents all the time just to say it.

Despite all this, I never experienced that moment, the one where I felt part of the club my friend had mentioned.

I still suspected I was an outsider pretending to know what parenthood actually felt like.

Then one morning, when my daughter must have been about 18 months old, I watched, mesmerised, as she toddled around a beachside cafe. I was amazed for the hundredth time that I'd had a part in creating this little being.

I looked at the other patrons and was astounded no one else was staring at my child, enraptured like I was.

And then it hit me. I had spent my life waiting for someone I could love unconditionally, who I would always be there for. I'd thought it would be a partner or a lover, but in fact it was my child.

Some might argue that the altruism of romantic love becomes the egoism of parenthood, but that's the club. I was in. Now, when I talk to friends who are expecting their first child, I try to explain that they're just about to meet their favourite-ever person (at least until the next kid comes along).

I remember when my mother used to tell my sister and I that she would walk in front of a speeding truck for us and I'd think "that's a little silly". I get it now, absolutely. If the only way to save my daughter's life was to give my own, it wouldn't even be a decision, it'd be pure instinct and my molecules would vibrate with joy as I died and rejoined the Infinite knowing she still lived.

I'd do anything for my kid – and I think almost every father (and mother) feels the same way. That's the genius of evolution. We have this massive brain that can conceptualise the abstract and obtuse, yet we're still wired, above all else, to protect our progeny.

Most of us are smart enough to realise this, yet we still manage to kid ourselves that our devotion is somehow unique. I realise my daughter and I are just two of billions of ants on an atom of clay floating in a vast vacuum, but I'm determined to wring every moment of elegant joy from the experience.

Nietzsche once wrote of parenthood: "The wind blew through my key hole, saying, 'Come!' My door cunningly opened of itself, saying, 'Go!' But I lay fettered by my love unto my children."

Tellingly, he never had children, never made it into the club.

Even today, almost five years after I learnt I would be a father, hearing my daughter say "Daddy" is the greatest sound in the world. It thrills and humbles me that such a kind, smart, funny, fierce, beautiful and brave little person is my child. And that I am, and always will be, her father.